CAPE TOWN/JOHANNESBURG – Students at the University of Cape Town have called on Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande to stop universities from hiking their tuition fees.

In this video made by Cape Town student Anne Landman, a group of white students had barricaded themselves in a classroom against hundreds of black rioters outside.

“I am here to demand free education that was promised to us,” Khanyiso Nkolwana, 22, a fashion-design student at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, said at the Wednesday protest. “It was promised to us in 1994.”

The government allocated 27.5 billion rand for tertiary education in the year through March 2016, which equates to 2 percent of total government spending, Nene’s mid-term budget shows. University student fees amount to 22 billion rand a year, according to Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande.

“Government has a limitation of what it can provide,” Nzimande told reporters in Cape Town on Wednesday. “We are very sympathetic to the issues being raised by the students. Of course university fees are very expensive.”